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Getting A More Personal View! Ryan “Henry” Ward, The Space Needle and the Spy Who Flubbed it All!

Sometimes my position as the Alternative Art Blogger for the Post Intelligencer Culture Blogs is a bit like being a spy. Sometimes I get to find things out long in advance and have to keep things under my hat for awhile. Such was the case on January 24th, when I spoke to local artist, muralist and perhaps the most influential artist in Seattle of 2013–Ryan “Henry” Ward. He came t0 me excited and had some very interesting news to share (not something entirely out of the normal scope of our everyday relationship-mind you.) Something incredible had happened, he said, but I couldn’t tell a soul–not until KIRO had spread the word. KIRO, I thought to myself, this could be interesting–he then proceeded to tell me a very captivating tale of intrigue, heroes, villians–perhaps even the darkest hearts of corruption–and by all accounts–this is just the half of it. Before I go any further, though, let me just say that it has been really difficult keeping this one a secret from everyone!

I met up with Ryan Henry Ward and Chris Smith at about 3:45 pm on a rainy Thursday last month. It started something very much like this (not exactly, though–real life doesn’t work that way–even the Surrealists allowed automatic writing to be tweaked a bit.)

Ryan Henry Ward: How are things going as the Leader of the rebel art forces. X-Man?

Xavier: Huh?

Ryan Henry Ward: Can I tell you a secret? But you can’t tell anyone else not until I tell you you can.

Xavier: Huh?? Sure!

Ryan Henry Ward: Want to hear my secret? I want you to know about this because you are an important part of the media machine–especially with anything having to do with art. But it’s got to be top secret for a couple weeks.

Xavier: Okay! (I said, not entirely sure what I was in for or whether this was a good thing. But as always, with Ryan–very intrigued.)

Ryan Henry Ward: You’re not going to believe this, remember the way the tally numbers suddenly spiked during the Space Needle Contest?

Xavier: Yes. (In fact I remembered mostly because on the day that this had happened, it was in fact Ryan himself who had IM’ed that morning to watch them with him as the numbers increased like an out-of-control speedometer and with them each and every one of his hopes for seeing his painting appear atop the fifty-year old symbol of all that is good in Seattle. Something seriously in danger of being tarnished if this entire story goes the way that I worry it will.)

Ryan Henry Ward: Well–we were absolutely right! We were right that something crazy had gone on–the folks at KIRO 7 have cracked the case on the space needle. This is a huge scandal!

Xavier: That is crazy, how could anyone think they could possibly get away with such a thing in this day and age and especially on something as important to all of us not only in Seattle but to the rest of the US as the Space Needle? Tell me about all of this! What exactly happened?

Ryan Henry Ward: They found the hacker and in doing so they have also proven that I actually won the contest.

Xavier: Awesome! I mean, of course you did–we all knew that! This is big! This will have to mean that the Space Needle will have to do the right thing and allow your painting to be on the top of the Space Needle. Right?

Ryan Henry Ward: I hope so, but that isn’t certain and we’ll talk more about that later. But right now we have to be quiet because they’re going to knock on the door of the hacker.

We don’t want him to find out about this until they have all the facts and are ready to go in.

Xavier: Ah–spy stuff!

Ryan Henry Ward: Yip!

Xavier: Cool! Mum’s the word! For some of us who always knew you had won and that there was something amiss–this doesn’t come as a surprise at all. However, can you describe for everyone just what happened and what it means in a nutshell. What part did KIRO 7 play in all of this and what is KIRO going to tell us about the situation?

Ryan Henry Ward: Well, it looked as though something fishy had happened in the voting process and sure enough they caught the guy who hacked in and added thousands of votes in a short amount of time to swing the votes his way.

KIRO 7 hired some computer forensics folks to take a look at how the voting actually happened and they figured out that it had to have been done by a hacker or hackers.

Xavier: Sounds very cloak and dagger. Was this person the other artist?

Ryan Henry Ward: I don’t know who this other person was.

Xavier: How does it feel to know that you actually did in fact win? I certainly hope that the folks at the Space Needle–choose to replace the other image with yours now that it is clear that you are the actual winner.

Ryan Henry Ward: I do feel like winning this is symbolic of what kind of fan base I’ve built with my lots of luck and hard work over the years. I’ve been working hard as an artist in this city for years now and it feels good to have the fans whom I’ve gained the respect of come out and vote for me.

Xavier: Have the folks at the Space Needle been contacted and have they said anything about the situation? How do you feel about how the Space Needle has handled the situation?

Ryan Henry Ward: Space needle has avoided the press and personal letters. The only feed back I’ve heard is “contact our lawyers.” This is my friend Chris Smith and he is doing my PR work on this and they(KIRO) have been talking with him about it. They told him that they found the hacker and are really excited about this story.

Chris Smith: Ryan and I are high school buddies who have stayed in touch. I run a local marketing company and have been involved with marketing for Microsoft, AT&T Mobility, Verizon Wireless, Samsung Mobility and the KUBE Haunted House. I definitely have a lot of feelings about the whole thing. Certainly, I never felt that they(the folks at the Space Needle) were complicit, just that they didn’t want to be bothered with living up to their responsibility as a contest runner or as a public institution. Their statement pretty much confirms that I was right. They were just looking for some easy publicity and because of who they are, they got it from the media.

The Statement made by the folks at the Space Needle, with unreleased identificatory information redacted.

If it becomes public knowldege, I’ll republish with redacted info included.

“The “#TopThis” roof painting contest was a fun, engaging way to cap off our 50th Anniversary celebration and build upon the excitement generated around the rare times when we paint the roof. We aimed to encourage participation in voting across all ages and backgrounds and, therefore, we structured the voting process to be as simple as possible. In any online competition with voting involved, anomalies in the process can be expected from many of the contestants. Given the celebratory spirit of this competition with no financial incentive, we hoped that this event could be free from these incidences. It was a popularity contest for the finalists and there is no doubt that several of them walked the fine line as they campaigned through numerous social channels. We clearly underestimated the excitement, response and energy that some of them put into achieving results, however, when the final public voting was tallied, we had the sole discretion through the contest rules to declare a winner. We really do believe that all the finalists were winners in this contest, and appreciated the spirit, excitement and creativity that all the entrants brought to the contest.”

Xavier: In a perfect world, how would you like to see them deal with this situation?

Chris Smith: It really is a slap in the face to the art community. I hope that Chihuly gives them hell when he hears about this. In a perfect world, I would like to see them put Ryan’s artwork up there. All of the artists who participated were wronged in this and we’ve worked to keep focus off the fact that the winner actually violated the rules of the contest as well. I don’t think she did so on purpose but the bottom line is that the rules specifically stated that a program like the MSN one that she used were not allowed.

An apology to everyone would be in order as well.

Ryan can’t get back the missed exposure during the New Year’s Eve festivities or the Seahawks playoffs.

Xavier: That is definitely true! Chris, were you involved in the process of finding out who was behind the vote tampering?

Chris Smith: KIRO tracked the guy down. I turned all of my info over to them in November and they ran with it. They strongly believe that there will be more that comes to light after the story airs. The guy works for a major Seattle company and he totally went to ground when he found out that they were looking for him. They sent me pictures of him to see if I knew him and I didn’t.

Xavier: “he totally went to ground?”

Chris Smith: Yeah. Halsne said he hasn’t left his gated apartment complex in weeks!

Xavier: Do you know what led them to believe that the votes had been tampered with–was it just the obvious thing we all saw that suddenly there were a lot of votes out of thin air?

Chris Smith: Most of it is based on what those of us who were monitoring the results page witnessed.

Xavier:Yeah, that was pretty amazing. Watching those numbers suddenly jump like that.

Chris Smith: Totally! I’ve been involved with some major Social media contests with Microsoft and what happened with those numbers is pretty much statistically impossible.

Xavier: It certainly seemed pretty crazy at the time!

Chris Smith: If you’ve ever taken a statistics class, you know that what we saw wasn’t possible from an honest standpoint. The point that I would most like to drive <home> is that the Space Needle is still trying to play this off and they need to step up and make it right or risk alienating the entire Seattle art community–not to mention the community at large. The hacker did what hackers do and he should be held accountable but the bigger story is just how irresponsible the Space Needle has been about the whole thing.

Xavier: You would think that they would want to take the high road. They are responsible for the reputation of the Space Needle-after all. Looks like this story may be far from over.

Chris Smith: There is reason to think that we only know about half the story right now. There is a lot of hubris over there. A lot of hubris.

Xavier: Definitely sounds like it. They forget that the Needle Itself was made by artists not administrators.

Chris Smith: Yeah, I was watching a doc on PBS about it the other night. If the original people who were involved in making it happen are around, they’re going to be pretty disappointed in what the current powers that be have done to their legacy.

Ryan Henry Ward: I’m mostly just happy for the people that put so much time and energy in voting and promoting me to win. This investigation actually gives all of us some justice. I really think “Henry” fans are amazing. I love them.

Xavier: You definitely deserve this–I can’t tell you how many people have come to me to tell me that they feel that you were robbed. Funny thing is that now we actually know that you were, in fact robbed.

Of course, that chilling response from the Space Needle is before the news breaks–undoubtedly this will change a lot of things with what they are willing to say and do. I would actually hazard a guess that we will see a Ryan Henry Ward Space Needle before the end of the year. It’s a little bit different when something like this is only suspected versus having the knowledge that something wrong did in fact occur. And if so I would love to “live paint” at your celebration for “old times’ sake–hear that Space Needle? I now have a cause for the year–Ryan on top and his friends directly below!

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..